THE MEETING by PAUL FORT

Dawn tints the earth with rose, and all the balconies' gold palimpsest. 'Tis the
boulevard Sebastopol. On the sky-line glooms the @3gare de l'Est@1.

All night I must have tramped the mire, an airing to my griefs to give. No
longer did I care to live. Then to catch cold was my desire.

Sunlight at heart, 'tis a romance! Well, my heart is warmed again, I find. I
have seen, in a heaven blue-of-France, the wandering clouds, all crimson-lined.

In rose I see black buildings high. The trees are rose, the air is rose. It has
rained, and all the roofs are rose. The pavement mirrors back the sky.

I hear my heart. The sun's gold ball mounts. Chestnut-trees are flowering bright
on the boulevard Sebastopol grown infinitely pure and light.

All gleams, the @3gare de l'Est@1 itself, the puddle that I splatter through. I
laugh, as does that little elf with rosy mud upon her shoe.

I'm cold no more. I laugh, I run. How brisk one feels at dawn of day! And I
pursue a little fay who wades through pools of dazzling sun.

There's no more thought of dying now. Dawn! And I see the gold signs flare. I
see flushed trees and crimsoned air, and, aglow, my heart to you I vow,

O little maiden, splashing gay through the roses of the Boulevard, and I forget,
dawn's little fay, all evening's daughters, grim and hard.

A kiss, yes! and I give you all the roses on the soil's fair breast, and the
balconies' gold palimpsest, and the boulevard Sebastopol, on the horizon the
@3gare de l'Est!@1

Triumph! . . . as that sweet kiss I take each building to its roof-tree glows. -
- Will you accept, for a poet's sake, Paris, that wondrous, burning rose?

and the Victory's gold wings above the fountain of the Chatelet? Two crowns to
deck the primrose-way, if you but willed it, of our love?

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